Nothing Changes is a weekly event at the Home Sweet Home bar. It is run by the next generation of the Wierd Records night at the same venue and same old night, so it will be nice to return to this space where I had guested in the past. This night will also be a pre-party for the Nowhere To Run festival in August (https://www.facebook.com/events/968135516587995)

I have recently expanded my online vending presence to the music webzine http://www.cvltnation.com’s designer marketplace, Cvltnation Bizarre. You can buy a limited selection of my work there as well. It’s proved to be a good move so far, and during the month of May I have reduced prices on patches to $2 (available through Etsy for the regular price of $3. The audience at CvltNation is certainly more directly in touch with the aesthetic I have been cultivating in the images I print. Natural History, Morbid Anatomy and Deathpunk Streetwear. So visit their site and have a look at some of the other vendors they host, many of which make and sell a lot of enviable wares.

This Friday, August 7th at The Mercury Lounge is a special night for music in NYC – Three live bands on one stage with after party and Djs from California and England! Thanks to The Red Party and Salvation and the others for collaborating on an event of this magnitude – no small feat for the NYC club and booking landscape.

The event is titled Murder Of Crows: live bands: The Brickbats Return again to the stage after nearly 200 years. Peeling Grey from Los Angeles are appearing for the first time in New York and with their album release party. The Harrow are from New York and one of its best new artists in years.

Yours truly will be behind the merch stand with my own brand of Deathrock and Gothpunk clothing and accessories from Mark Splatter Printwerk along with my good friends from California of Release The Bats and Killer Pins!

Then on August 30th I will be vending again at the Morbid Anatomy Museum Flea Market Summer Reprise among an increased group of vendors at a larger space next door to the Museum at The Bell House!

2000-2005 was a particularly relevant time in deathrock culture. I had just moved to California from New Jersey, as the proprietor of Deathrock.com, a webzine that served as a sort of beacon for the dark-minded music aficionado. Part reference guide, part webzine, it was a place where bands like UK Decay, TSOL, and The Mob first got more than just a mention in a collectors’ trade list. I was a young zine publisher who’d taken up web design in its infancy and was eager to share my love for anything remotely Misfits-esque, or even darker, more somber sounds like Southern Death Cult and Kommumity FK.

The New York presence of adherents for such sounds was lacking, apart from a small corps of gloom rockers like Charlie the Slut and Paul Morden, who took me under their wing as an aspiring DJ, and our close friends. When I visited California to meet some of the Los Angeles correspondents I was blown away by the packed floor of a club dedicated to just such sounds at Release The Bats. NYC always stood apart as too homogenous and sophisticated in its tastes to cater to such a niche and outmoded (although beloved) style. It was a no-brainer that the West Coast was where I wanted to be, where deathrock, as many argue, was born.

Six months later I packed my bags and arrived, a 21-year-old devil lock-wearing deathpunk, and a postage stamp-sized record distributer with a case of music and a pair of DJ headphones. There it was not that it was still going strong, as it was ground zero for a full-on rebirth. New bands were evolving and converging, local bands coming into their own distinct style, Cinema Strange and The Deep Eynde pumped all sorts of energy and fishnet into our veins, and local legends were showing their faces again. Kommumity FK, Dinah Cancer and Gitane Demone resumed their positions as luminaries. Release the Bats was our Mecca, facing west. Bands from all over the globe were sending their energy into it too. Crews from further north and south were getting in touch. First the San Francisco synth-damaged Phantom Limbs with The Vanishing one on top of the other. Frank The Baptist and Diana Death from San Diego.

In that motley crew of deathrockers, gothpunks, dark new wavers, postpunks and horrorpunks were Amelia and Forrest, of Blueblood fame—one of the only established alt-porn names of the day. With their camera savvy and eye for the exotic black-clad, they managed to capture in brilliant gloss the blackest the Sunshine State had to offer, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Now their work has been collected in this deluxe photo book, California Deathrock.

It reads without words like a yearbook of the era. Looking through the photos brings “ooohs” and “aaahhs” of recognition; the friends, acquaintances, strangers, lovers, and adversaries (if only for their makeup flair or record collections!). Fishing names and memories out of a golden era is just one of the perks of this book. The first of all being the gamut of styles, the theatrics, the glamour, the variety and poetry of appearance that this book represents, a jewel in the collection of anyone who finds beauty in the creativity and expression of the gothic style.
http://californiadeathrock.com for more info:

Back in action! Brooklyn's Catrina Calavera, Public Speaking and Jeanann Dara will be playing alongside each other for a beautiful night of music. Come get a Tarot reading and live in the moment while listening to the beautiful vibes these artists keep pushing and displaying every time they play live! Seriously, Not to be missed.

Bar/Cafe with a studio in back offering community events like Yoga and Dance. Kitchen serving great breakfasts and coffee during the day. Night time the bar offers a fully loaded Misfits cocktail menu! Smoking Patio and a full weekly schedule of special events.

Other Info

DJ Mark Splatter provides a rocknroll soundtrack comprised completely of cover-versions and the originals of classic cover songs! Cramps, Iggy Pop to Stiv Bators, the masters of the chanson-noir, Back To The Grave, Garage Rock and Horrorpunk, its a setlist tongue-in-cheek and at the same time strangely familiar at Jefferson streets favorite bar!

Sunday, December 2, 2012, I’m at Motor City bar, djing from 10 til late, with a collection of trashy sounds smuggled in from overseas.

“Monday night music tasting from the vinyl cellars of the Splatterhaus. Deep cuts of aged post-post punk, fresh green indie stuffed with pimento, pickled punk, and a funky beat euro-filmscore salad.
Wash it all down with a whiskey, wine or beer from NYC’s best and oldest Detroit style dive bar, with your Bartendress, Karissa”

Monday, November 19, 2012, I’m at Motor City bar, djing from 10 til late, with a collection of trashy sounds smuggled in from overseas.

“Monday night music tasting from the vinyl cellars of the Splatterhaus. Deep cuts of aged post-post punk, fresh green indie stuffed with pimento, pickled punk, and a funky beat euro-filmscore salad.
Wash it all down with a whiskey, wine or beer from NYC’s best and oldest Detroit style dive bar.”